"Internet Usage Advisory" Time to riot?

[Tanner Rawlings]

"Internet Usage Advisory

Suddenlink has established an Internet allowance plan in your area. Under that plan, the message and steps outlined below are required before you can continue using your Internet service.

Around 11:59 PM on 07/03/2014, your account had used 257.0 GB in the current monthly billing period, exceeding the monthly allowance of 250 GB. This is the first time your account has exceeded the monthly allowance since our current plan was established. Customers are not billed for exceeding the monthly allowance until the third time doing so.

In the future, we'll notify you after your account uses more than 80% of its allowance and again if it exceeds that allowance. Below, please (a) indicate which future notification method you prefer; ( acknowledge your receipt of this message by entering and confirming your 16-digit Suddenlink account number; and © select "Save." The information you provide will only be used for communicating with you about your account's Internet usage."

anyone else getting this message? i cant connect to the internet so im having to use the mobile data on my phone to type this up, funny thing is that i think it might be a virus, but im still doubting that so i was wondering if anyone has some details on it as the kerbal forums and the suddenlink website are the only ones i can get to (i sometimes can get onto other forum websites but kerbal forums is the most reliable right now, thanks squad). ive ran anti maleware and anti virus 4 times and still cant connect, ive resorted to making KNO3 and sugar rockets to satisfy my lack of ksp (i deleted it to get a fresh file) so if anyone else has this it'll tell me that its not a virus and that is some crap suddenlink is trying to pull and if its that ill know to start a riot! (jk) thanks!

[Nuke]

this is your isp telling you that you download too much stuff. i feel sorry for you when you get your bill. one time my sister came over and visited and watched netflix on her laptop the whole time. we got a $200 internet bill, she got banned from my router.

[Tanner Rawlings]

well hopefully they dont send the bill before the paycheck, thanks anyways

[Depth]

Suddenlink has established an Internet allowance plan in your area.

Is this even legal? Did you consider changing to another ISP?

[Duxwing]

Is this even legal? Did you consider changing to another ISP?

Legal or illegal, switch: my ISP is all-you-can-eat.

-Duxwing

[Camacha]

Is this even legal?

It makes me wonder what year it is.

[Nuke]

my old isp just piled up charges on my bill without offering any way out. my newer isp emails me when i get to 80% of my allotment, but wont block me if i go over. i suppose cutting your access and asking you what to do is better than a large surprise fee at the end of the month. you could probibly turn it back on with a large price per gb, but id advise against it.

Edited July 7, 2014 by Nuke

[Dodgey]

Where are you living? This is pretty standard in Australia.

[lajoswinkler]

If you have a flatrate account, they don't have any right to do this. Your contract with them says you are paying for unlimited data transfer, so if they bug you, I'm sure you can talk to some public agency for customers' rights protection.

If they've changed the tariff without noticing you, they're breaking the law.

If you've signed the contract without reading that you have a monthly limit of 250 GB, or if they've sent you a notice of tariff change, then it's your fault and you should back down.

That's it, plain simple.

[Brethern]

So you find it more convenient to come onto a gaming forum. That is populated by anyone from the ages 13 to whatever who live all over the planet to ask them a question about your local ISP?

Instead of doing the logical thing and calling your ISP up and asking them this exact same question?

This is known as a common sense test and sadly you failed.

[pxi]

There are various utilities you can get for keeping track of your bandwidth usage, and it's probably a good idea to have a look on your router to see if there's any facility for tracking it there - that's obviously the ideal location for monitoring bandwidth usage.

I mention this, because you seem surprised and/or unaware of how much you've been downloading, which has me wondering if you're the only one using the network. 257GB is not exactly a tiny amount of data to be downloading.

I've had ISP's that throttle my connection when I hit the monthly cap, but I've never had one that outright cut me off.

[Seret]

Data caps suck. If you can switch to an ISP that does unlimited and live happily ever after.

[Aghanim]

At least this forum is much friendlier than most of the gaming forums up there, even if this place is populated by 13 year old they have good manner, unlike one of the youtube comment thread where someone make a joke about a $70k PC cannot run minecraft, and I suggested a better PC that is better than that and only costs $60k, and its my fault that I didn't pick up the joke earlier and I'm bashed. Or another youtube comment thread where someone is telling aluminium foil is not heat resistant, and someone refutes that point, and the OP replies to him with every profanity in this world and telling him that he is anti social

Back to topic: In my country, there are no data cap unless you are using mobile internet, and usually its capped at 4 GB or so. Again, as everyone says, if possible, get a uncapped internet. However, if you cannot do that for some reason, you need to record your internet usage somehow. In my mobile internet, there is a meter indicating my remaining internet quota, but I don't know if your internet have it

[Nuke]

Data caps suck. If you can switch to an ISP that does unlimited and live happily ever after.

problem is in many areas there is only one option. so you are pretty much at the mercy of the local isp. id even take a lower data rate if it meant unlimited usage. of course around here the low speed accounts have even more brutal limits. higher caps are marketed as a premium service. its literally set up so that there is no way whatsoever not to get screwed, you have to pay a fortune and watch your data usage like a hawk. some places have unlimited connections, but i hear these are actually on the decline.

Edited July 8, 2014 by Nuke

[Seret]

problem is in many areas there is only one option. so you are pretty much at the mercy of the local isp. id even take a lower data rate if it meant unlimited usage. of course around here the low speed accounts have even more brutal limits. higher caps are marketed as a premium service. its literally set up so that there is no way whatsoever not to get screwed, you have to pay a fortune and watch your data usage like a hawk. some places have unlimited connections, but i hear these are actually on the decline.

Yep, that's the problem. Try searching for some of the smaller ISPs, they often compete with the big boys by tailoring their service for people that don't fit the typical profile, like heavy downloaders or people who want static IPs. You tend to get better service from a small ISP in my experience, too.

[Red Iron Crown]

I fear that data caps will spread to all ISPs soon enough. And to be honest, metered Internet is fairer than unlimited.

I have unlimited fiber where I live, hope it never changes.

[Guest]

I fear that data caps will spread to all ISPs soon enough. And to be honest, metered Internet is fairer than unlimited.

I have unlimited fiber where I live, hope it never changes.

Data caps have shown up in my area also. The ISP stated something to the effect that a small percentage of users were using most of the bandwidth, so in order to make it fair for everyone, they were initiating data usage limits. It doesn't cost any extra, they simply throttle your speed. This may not sound like much, but I wonder if the ISP's that supply both cable tv and internet are seeing a drop in cable tv subscriptions? With the rise of services like Netflix, who really needs cable TV service anyway? So , if I was an enterprising cable tv provider and I wanted to make more money, it would be highly tempting for me to try and booster my subscription rate by taking away my customers ability to use the internet, thereby creating more demand for cable tv. Just a thought. Is my reasoning flawed?

[7499275]

I used to have hughes net and once you reaached your data limit your speed dropped to around... 50kbp/s. Horribly annoying considering the data cap wasn't much. I have suddenlink as well... Kinda curious now where your at?

[EdFred]

I like my Charter Cable at 60MB/s and unlimited usage. Of course, I don't do much in the way of netflix or streaming so I'd never even come close to hitting any data caps if they did have them.

[lajoswinkler]

I fear that data caps will spread to all ISPs soon enough. And to be honest, metered Internet is fairer than unlimited.

I have unlimited fiber where I live, hope it never changes.

What do you mean it will spread? That's how it started, after dial-up began with phasing out. Flatrate did not come into existence at once.

[Camacha]

I like my Charter Cable at 60MB/s and unlimited usage. Of course, I don't do much in the way of netflix or streaming so I'd never even come close to hitting any data caps if they did have them.

I can honestly say that I would not know what to do with those speeds. Even when downloading huge files 10 MB/s seems to be plenty to have it arrive quickly. I cannot imagine spending more money to save a few seconds.

[Red Iron Crown]

What do you mean it will spread? That's how it started, after dial-up began with phasing out. Flatrate did not come into existence at once.

Maybe it's a regional thing. Here all broadband was uncapped when it first arrived here (two different ISPs). It was one of the big selling points, "always on, faster, unlimited". One of them has since implemented caps, I suspect the other will follow suit in a few years. Though for now they're marketing pretty heavily that they have no caps, gonna anger many customers if they reneg on that.

[EdFred]

I can honestly say that I would not know what to do with those speeds. Even when downloading huge files 10 MB/s seems to be plenty to have it arrive quickly. I cannot imagine spending more money to save a few seconds.

It was a "free" upgrade for me. I was happy with 10MB - and had that for a long time, but when I went to change my cable subscription, they had bumped the internet speed for me - and I was paying $30 less/month for MOAR channels, and more speed. What I've found at 60MB/s is that the bottleneck is on the server I'm downloading from - which is a long ways from when I was using Napster on 28.8k and ecstatic to be able to download a song at over 3!

[joppiesaus]

I am not sure if this is somekind of virus or real stuff...

Is this even legal?

Anyways my ISP has 100 Mb/s and unlimited data traffic. For € 20 extra/month it is 500 Mb/s.

[kenbobo]

http://www.suddenlink.com/allowanceplan/

so yeah.